Leadership for the next phase of growth | Grupo Pantaleon

About

Grupo Pantaleon is the largest sugar and ethanol producer in Central America, having grown dramatically across its 175-year history.

The privately owned business now has significant regional presence, with mills in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, which together output over 1.1 million tonnes of sugar and by products.

With sustainability, innovation, operational efficiency, and community at its heart, the business exports globally, and has built a reputation which affords Pantaleon respect on the world stage.

The challenge

As the global sugar landscape shifts, driven by macroeconomic factors, environmental trends, changes in sugar consumption patterns, and technological advancement, Pantaleon have been quick to see the need to embark on a journey of transformation and diversification.

The Board understood that to build further resilience into the group there was a need to diversify the business away from purely sugar production; a priority which needed to be finely balanced against maintained focus on the core business.

Millar Cameron were engaged to support the Board with the identification of a Group CEO to lead this brand defining transformation. We were tasked to go to market and source executives from a range of industries across the globe, whilst also assessing an internal pool of Pantaleon’s top senior talent.

The crux of the challenge in this case was to identify, attract, and assess individuals that could effectively straddle Pantaleon’s opposing needs, namely:

• To bring novel industry expertise and a fresh cultural mindset needed to truly allow the business to play and win in new markets.
• To simultaneously protect the deeply historically routed values that have allowed Pantaleon to remain so successful for such a long time.

There was an incredibly broad set of geographies and industries from which a future CEO may come. Despite this, our understanding of Pantaleon as an organisation, and our extensive assessment of candidates’ situational expertise and leadership qualities led us to the conclusion that very few individuals were truly positioned for success in this role.

Our approach

The real complexity of this search lay in the myriad potential experience sets that candidates could possess.

Geographically, our search spanned 5 continents, and required us to leverage the cultural understanding we have built from an extensive history of international placements.

Due to the desire for diversification, we considered executives from several different sectors including sugar, other commodities, biotech, ingredients, biofuels, and broader cleantech. Instrumental to success was not only our industry expertise across agricultural and industrial supply chains, but also our ability to systematically and rapidly assess a large number of potential candidates.

Ultimately, Millar Cameron considered over 500 people and interviewed more than 100 for the role.

The solution

For this recruitment project, we leveraged our:

• Global cultural understanding, broad industry expertise, and extensive network of innovative companies and individuals.
• Strong project management skills, seamlessly integrating the assessment of both external and internal candidates. This included three rounds of interviews in multiple languages, along with comprehensive informal and formal referencing. Our ability to connect with candidates on a personal level was specifically praised by Pantaleon throughout the process.
• Ability to distill and communicate critical insights gathered from Millar Cameron-held interviews.
• Tact and emotional intelligence in objectively assessing six internal candidates while being mindful of attrition risks.
• Effective execution of discovery meetings, progress updates, and decision-making gates, balancing the needs of diverse stakeholders with differing, and sometimes opposing, priorities. This approach enabled the board to make an informed decision, fully considering all potential variables and risks.

The outcome

Ultimately, an internal candidate was selected for the Group CEO role, given the criticality of understanding and maintaining Pantaleon’s culture. A Millar Cameron sourced external candidate was also hired to build and lead Pantaleon’s innovation division, Bionexus.

The selection of the CEO has proven exceptionally positive, and despite unexpected climate challenges, the horizon looks immensely positive.

The CEO of the innovation division has been universally well received.

A multi-year strategic plan has been developed and internal team assembled. The division has already established a joint venture with a North American partner.